Recently, technologies achieving interactive dialogues between a human being and a machine have been in more widespread use. For example, Siri (registered trademark), Pepper (registered trademark), and PALRO (registered trademark) provided by Apple Inc., SoftBank Corp., and FUJISOFT INCORPORATED, respectively, are known.
A talk between a human being and a machine in communication with each other needs artificial intelligence (AI) and speech recognition technologies, but analyzing the context to give responses is not enough to achieve communications. A technology or the like for inferring human emotions is needed.
Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Kokai Publication No. 2001-188785 discloses a technique for making a natural transition to another topic. Specifically, Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique for making a transition to another topic, depending on whether the dialogue has dealt with each item (for example, when, where, who, and what was done) that serve as indicators of whether the parties have exhausted a topic.